Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Disappointingly we’ve been the only parents who’ve been there during the football coaching sessions this week but we’ve been well rewarded with a week long series of excellent football skills by everyone from the 6 year olds through to the 10 year olds taking part.

Our little guy has really taken to the game and managed to clock up 6 goals in one of the matches and he’s been picking up various prizes during the week with at least three trophies to be picked up this afternoon including both individual and team wins. Unfortunately, his big brother doesn’t seem to have accumulated quite so many so there’s a bit of disappointment in store when they start comparing trophy counts. We’re not sure how many are coming their way as there were just an amazing number of opportunities to pick things up during the course of the week and there’s a final tournament this morning before the prize giving in the afternoon.

The weather has been almost perfect for the week so far with just the right mix of cloud and sun so that nobody collapsed with heatstroke nor were we freezing. Supposedly it’s going to be pouring today so they’re relocating to the gym.

We’ve had a Decathlon card since our time living in France but since we’re into our second year back here we’ve obviously not used it for a while. Almost two years in fact.

Anyway, Belfast happens to be one of the first places that Decathlon has opened a UK store so we thought we’d pop in. It’s very much a French Decathlon that happens to be in Belfast with seemingly all the same products and even the very same trollies which, of course, can’t be used as they need a euro in them rather than a pound. Even the prices seem much the same which makes it one of the more expensive stores around unless you pick something up on one of their 60%+ off opening offers.

Amazingly it’s even French to the point of being able to use my French Decathlon card which is a level of internationalisation that’s very, very rarely seen which is quite a surprise. The website isn’t 100% in English yet but I managed to change the address of the card to here which is also something that’s rarely considered when a company goes international.

Not so long ago you were encouraged to put as much as you could into checked luggage so that the passenger area of the plane wasn’t cluttered with a whole heap of a little (often a lot) too large carry-on luggage.

Of course, it’s completely different now and they want you to do without checked luggage altogether if you can. Despite their normally over the top approach to charging even Ryanair has raised the carry-on allowances to a notional 10kg  (Ryanair say “It should weigh no more than 10kg”). In practical terms, so long as you go for online check-in, there really isn’t a limit so long as you can actually carry it onto the plane and so long as it’s not too far off the 55x40x20 size.

Even the liquid limits don’t seem overly severe so long as you don’t try to bring drinks. Normal sized tubes of toothpaste might look big but they’re no more than the 100ml limit. You can even bring on drinks so long as you buy them after you’ve passed through security thus avoiding the ridiculous prices on the plane (though don’t be drinking too much on Ryanair as it’s £1 for the toilet).

Laughably these days you’re still not allowed to take “magnetised materials” on-board although that’s a rule that has been totally impractical to enforce since credit cards came on the scene not to mention the magnetic stripe on many tickets. I wonder when it’ll occur to IATA to revise this?

What is a real pain is getting everything into the one bag. As you read this I’ll be struggling to get a weeks worth of clothes plus assorted items for my OU summer school into a bag: white coat, big lump of a course book, computer, etc. I’m sure that there’s room for a “how to pack a carry-on bag” course!

That’s one of the questions that you get asked in the abbreviated test for dementia that doctors sometimes use.

I’m sure that it sounded like a sensible question when the test was first devised but it was devised by people who work “normal” Monday to Friday jobs which, of course, is something entirely different to the kind of activity pattern experienced by the, usually, retired people it’s intended to assess. When you’re retired, by and large, every day is very much like Saturday is to the rest of us with the sole exception of Sunday for church goers.

Another is “who is the Prime Minister” which also isn’t quite such an obvious question in these days when there’s a whole plethora of prime ministers in the UK. And, of course, we’ve just got a new couple at the helm. Thus, not such a valid question after all.

What about asking what year it is? That makes a lot of sense when you’re working but realistically isn’t something that matters a whole lot when you’re retired and don’t work to a calendar.

Which just goes to show how difficult it can be to devise even an apparently simple test.

The sleepy village of Rothbury has largely been cut off from the outside world for the last few days and now finds itself knee deep in TV crews this evening thanks to Raoul Moat being finally cornered in the village.

As you might expect the relief is clear within the village and behind the camera crews there seems to be very much a carnival atmosphere with the end game of this chase taking place just a few hundred yards beyond. That might seem unseemly to some but these people have essentially been confined to their houses and in fear of their lives for several days now so it’s very much a relief to be close to returning to the normality of their sleepy village once more.

The police negotiating team are hard at work. Some might ask why bother but it’s just natural for the police to try to avoid further bloodshed whenever they can. Thus the negotiator will be attempting to build up a sense of trust between them and Raoul through agreeing to simple things like providing him with something to eat and drink. What they’re building to is to get him to hand over his weapon of course but that will take time in what seems sure to be a tense situation so don’t expect major developments anytime soon.

What does seem a bit over the top is the sheer number of police officers and vehicles although that should be set against the growing numbers of press and bystanders rather than the lone gunman.

As we move towards the hours of darkness they’ll be keen to move all those bystanders a little further back. You might think that floodlighting the area would be the way to go but that’s likely to increase tension still further and is therefore something to be avoided.

In that it’s a lone gunman, the final stages shouldn’t be too many hours more. After all, he’s going to have to sleep at some stage. However, that very tiredness will make the negotiations that little bit more difficult especially as we’re dealing with someone who seemed set on suicide earlier.